The first Predator movie starring Arnold finally gets a proper release on HD.

In 2008 it was released on blu ray, but being an early release blu it was based off an old transfer. In 2010 Predator was given a new transfer and released on blu ray yet again with lots of extras It was dubbed "Ultimate Hunter Edition". Sadly, the blu ray had heavy DNR applied to it. What does that mean? Let me explain.

Older movies naturally have film grain due to the way they were filmed. By applying DNR - or digital noise reduction - they scrub off the grain. This makes the movie look more smooth but in turn scrubs away detail and makes people look like wax figures. Sadly, the latest release of Terminator 2 also suffers from that, but let's stick to Predator here.

While to the average viewer DNR might make the movie look better, essentially it makes as much sense as cropping a 4x3 movie so that it fits on a widescreen TV. It basically ruins the movie.

But now Predator was just released in 4K which also comes packed with a regular blu. The regular blu is sadly the same disc as the Ultimate Hunter Edition (or as many have dubbed it, Ultimate DNR Edition). But the 4K version is DNR free and has all the film grain intact!

It's debatable whether or not 4K is a waste. Go to costco and look at their 4K TVs and your jaw will drop. But this isn't about 4K vs blu here or if 4K is a waste. It's about a good vs garbage presentation of the film. In this case the 4K version presents the film properly where the UHE blu is a garbage release.

4k TVs are just the norm, I don't think anyone is debating if they are the way to go, it's unavoidable. I have a 65" 4K TV in my house right now, but I seldom watch content in 4k because you need the devices like Lanza said. When I have seen 4k, the difference is not noticeable enough for me to upgrade my Apple TV, and I damn sure will never buy physical media again in the form of these 4k discs.

As always, the grain and different stuff you quality nuts freak out about is just pathetic and irrelevant IMO.

Yes, TV's of a certain size will be 4K. My point was anything under like 50-55" is completely useless, as the screen size has diminished enough that the higher resolution really has no discernible effect.

As for remastering....here's the thing. On a 30-year old movie, which someone like Class did NOT see in a theater, they were offered a horrible pan and scan 320x240 hunch of crap known as VHS for at least a decade! On broadcast TV or even cable, something even worse. When DVD's came about, some films were given a true remastering, that cleaned up the old masters. Again, this was done because the film had DEGRADED in some cases. But this cost a lot more money in the 90's than it does now, so many films weren't as fortunate. Regardless, nobody "changed" the film, they simply cleaned it up. When 1080p and higher presentations and bit-rates became available, the studios had to bump up the film. The right way to do it was to rescan the master, which again, had aged, and have software clean/fix the imperfections. Here again, this is not altering the film, it's clearing it up. I see no problem with any of this.

I was astonished at how amazing the Star Trek TOS looked when they did it and aired the episodes. You could see Shat-sweat!

4k TVs are just the norm, I don't think anyone is debating if they are the way to go, it's unavoidable. I have a 65" 4K TV in my house right now, but I seldom watch content in 4k because you need the devices like Lanza said. When I have seen 4k, the difference is not noticeable enough for me to upgrade my Apple TV, and I damn sure will never buy physical media again in the form of these 4k discs.

As always, the grain and different stuff you quality nuts freak out about is just pathetic and irrelevant IMO.

True. However with 4K TVs taking over and 4K devices now ranging at $100 give or take, it's not long before 4K devices are the norm. 4K players also plays DVD and blu ray discs. I should add that 4K movies unlike DVD and blu have no region coding. Whenever I get a new player it's going to be a 4K one. Even if you don't have a 4K TV it makes more sense to get the 4K player at this point.

4K players that are region free for both DVD and blus can cost a bit, but the way people get around that, get a standard 4K device and a second non-4k region free blu ray device for cheap. So if you want to play non-US DVDs and blus use the region free player. For 4K and US DVDs/blu use the 4K player.

4k TVs are just the norm, I don't think anyone is debating if they are the way to go, it's unavoidable. I have a 65" 4K TV in my house right now, but I seldom watch content in 4k because you need the devices like Lanza said. When I have seen 4k, the difference is not noticeable enough for me to upgrade my Apple TV, and I damn sure will never buy physical media again in the form of these 4k discs.

As always, the grain and different stuff you quality nuts freak out about is just pathetic and irrelevant IMO.

I don't know if I will upgrade the discs I have but sadly for the future I have to move to 4K releases (starting with Predator when it goes down in price).

Yes, TV's of a certain size will be 4K. My point was anything under like 50-55" is completely useless, as the screen size has diminished enough that the higher resolution really has no discernible effect.

As for remastering....here's the thing. On a 30-year old movie, which someone like Class did NOT see in a theater, they were offered a horrible pan and scan 320x240 hunch of crap known as VHS for at least a decade! On broadcast TV or even cable, something even worse. When DVD's came about, some films were given a true remastering, that cleaned up the old masters. Again, this was done because the film had DEGRADED in some cases. But this cost a lot more money in the 90's than it does now, so many films weren't as fortunate. Regardless, nobody "changed" the film, they simply cleaned it up. When 1080p and higher presentations and bit-rates became available, the studios had to bump up the film. The right way to do it was to rescan the master, which again, had aged, and have software clean/fix the imperfections. Here again, this is not altering the film, it's clearing it up. I see no problem with any of this.

I was astonished at how amazing the Star Trek TOS looked when they did it and aired the episodes. You could see Shat-sweat!

Yes they remastered and cleaned up a lot of stuff. And that's a good thing. But scrubbing off film grain is not cleaning up. That's SUPPOSED to be there due to how it was filmed. Again, it makes as much sense as cropping a 4x3 movie like Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in order for it to fill a widescreen TV (or as you pointed out like they did in the VHS days and crop a widescreen movie to fit the then dominant 4x3 TVs). Or it makes as much sense as colorizing a b&w movie. All these processes ruin the movie. That film grain was present as soon as the camera man hit the record button.

Other movies plagued by DNR are the most recent releases of Grease and Terminator 2. Fans were weeping at how bad the DNR is in the most recent T2 release. Also in the case of Grease the 4K release has less DNR than the regular blu, though it is still plagued by DNR.

75% of my physical collection was sold. The remaining 25% simply won’t sell. I do get the occasional digital iTunes film in 4K by accident but I never pay the premium for 4K codes. Makes no difference to me

75% of my physical collection was sold. The remaining 25% simply won’t sell. I do get the occasional digital iTunes film in 4K by accident but I never pay the premium for 4K codes. Makes no difference to me

I don't care for legal digital downloads. I see them as a waste. I either pay for physical or download digital for free via "alternate" means. A lot of times these downloads are even superior to anything you can get via legal means (physical or digital). The most notable example is original theatrical versions of Star Wars 4-6 in HD. The best legal means to obtain Star Wars 4-6 are 2006 DVD releases that use the same remasters used in early 90s laserdiscs.

One recent thing I downloaded that is superior to any legal release, the first Terminator movie. No blu ray release has the original mono track, only a revisionist DTS 5.1 audio track that changes a lot of things (mostly for the worst). To get the mono track you have to go back to DVDs and even those are not exactly as the original theatrical mono track. The download I obtained has the blu ray footage in its full HD glory (thankfully no DNR applied on this one so it has all the film grain intact) and offers two options for audio tracks. One is the DTS 5.1 track as presented in the blu ray, the other is the mono track in its purest form taken from the laserdisc

Most of the alternative aka ILLEGAL downloads are inferior quality, quite inferior in fact.

The keyword here being most. A lot are equal and some are superior. I already gave a couple examples of superiority. Another example is Song of the South where the best legal release is a Japanese laserdisc. Fans did their magic with 35mm prints and gave us superior high quality releases.

iTunes houses my collection in a cloud that I can access in seconds with menus, extras, etc and is accessible on all my TVs without needing my PC running. Illegal downloads take time to gather and exist on external hard drives that die. I’ve lost illegal media collections more than once that way. My collection will remain via iTunes.

iTunes houses my collection in a cloud that I can access in seconds with menus, extras, etc and is accessible on all my TVs without needing my PC running. Illegal downloads take time to gather and exist on external hard drives that die. I’ve lost illegal media collections more than once that way. My collection will remain via iTunes.

I get what you're saying but you are at the mercy of said cloud. If iTunes somehow loses the rights to something you lose access to it. And in theory iTunes could go out of business and you lose all.